Article

2006-10-09 Afghanistan

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Posted by Fred 2006-10-09 00:00|| || Front Page|| [6 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I call bullshit. Take a woman-only poll and extrapolate the numbers. They sure as hell won't support a return of the Taleban.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-10-09 00:48|| 2006-10-09 00:48|| Front Page Top

#2 You're having a failure of imagination, Zenster. Remember the statement about Mr Taliban, running around with a child as a human shield while he's shooting at coalition troops?

Chances are it isn't his child, and it wasn't the child's (or its parent's) choice to be there.

Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2006-10-09 01:34|| 2006-10-09 01:34|| Front Page Top

#3 Hey, if the Afghanis wanna revert, they'll revert. No one can stop them. They'll just be another target range.

Posted by .com 2006-10-09 04:18|| 2006-10-09 04:18|| Front Page Top

#4 Strange world - 'they' win if we can't stop them from randomly breaking stuff and killing people; we only win if we can stop them, and do it without any collateral damage. Seriously asymmetric.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2006-10-09 07:19|| 2006-10-09 07:19|| Front Page Top

#5 Afghans are likely to switch their allegiance to the Taliban if there is no visible improvement in their lives in the next six months.

Sounds like a blackmail to the free world. The beardo weirdos will have the final choice - as to whether to become an easier target. The global village, however, is getting too small for their wrong choosing.

Posted by Duh! 2006-10-09 07:30|| 2006-10-09 07:30|| Front Page Top

#6 So, IMO "friendly Muslims" are the most dangerous sort.

Posted by gromgoru 2006-10-09 09:23|| 2006-10-09 09:23|| Front Page Top

#7 Hey, if the Afghanis wanna revert, they'll revert. No one can stop them. They'll just be another target range.

They'll revert under duress from the Pakistanis, who will then present us with the choice of either doing nothing or bombing _their_ victims.

And the US bombing more Afghanis who have "regressed" against their will suits the wakipakis just fine, along with their underwriters in Saudi, China, and the UAE. By not dealing with that larger situation instead we generally fuck ourselves over even more.

Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2006-10-09 12:07|| 2006-10-09 12:07|| Front Page Top

#8 I call "shenanigans". I've had plenty of buddies over there. Every one said that 90% of the afghan tribes want the U.S. to stick around. Only in the south and east is there any taliban traction, and that not as much as reported. If, the multitude of afghanis are so feckless to want taliban rule over freedom then f*ck'em says I.

Posted by Broadhead6 2006-10-09 15:39|| 2006-10-09 15:39|| Front Page Top

#9 Furry Critter -- I'll have a go at this without the Dire Hand-Wringing, thanks. You were very direct in your criticism - I'll reciprocate.

The lesson in Iraq is damned clear: nation-building is a loser. Same for Afghanistan. Why? What do they have in common? Islam. Whether the add-on layer is Arrogant Arab or Terminally Tribal, Islam perverts, and eventually trumps, all efforts to bring change, progress.

Afghanistan is not ethnically homogenous, as Broadhead6 points out, but they are basically all "Islamists". The leap from their normal state of affairs to Taleban rule is short, more like a leetle bunny hop, methinks. Additionally, what happens in Kabul is mostly irrelevant outside of Kabul, so the Taleban gets a pass on most of its festivities. We're expecting them to "beam forward" 13 or 14 centuries. Some number will want it, will see what doing so offers, but if it requires removing Islam from the position of fundamental power, it ain't gonna happen, IMO. Having Islam as the underlying norm is equivalent to having a thumb on the scale. Big leverage there.

They have a tradition of tribes, clans, warlords and, at any of these arbitrary breakpoints, going to the highest bidder - for that day, anyway. They are, also, a perfect example of classic Islam. Can we overcome that? Can we compete against the ISI when the ISI pushes Islam, even though the precise flavor may not fit all Afghanis perfectly? Nope. Only if we could magically remove the ancient merger of their tribal traditions and Islam would we have a real chance. Islam is the big fat thumb on the scale. Beaucoup leverage. We could pour money into Afghanistan, accepting graft and corruption on the scale of a Genuine African Shithole, until we have paid 100x over for converting the place into Disney World. Happy, happy, joy, joy. Then, the second we backed off, the Islamic asshats among them would loot the effort and none of them would care enough to stop it. The evidence we have says that's the result we can expect from nation-building efforts in the presence of Islam.

We are not willing to invest that much and they are not willing to change in our direction without some form of "duress", as you put it, such as an instant pass into the 21st century. And even then only temporarily - for as long as we are willing to fund it. We are failing in the nation-building thingy there because we ask more of them than they are willing to give or demand of themselves. What we expect and offer in compensation for the disruption of the norm is easily countered and overcome by that Islamic thumb on the scale.

How will we overcome the ancient ways, that combination of Tribal Warlord and Insane Islam, as long as Islam (i.e. the Saudi-funded ISI in this case) is bidding against us?

I don't believe we can. With Islam, the game is rigged. We've gotta remove the funding of the opposition or we're just wasting treasure.

That's my take.

I invite the experts to correct any and all of my take.

Posted by .com 2006-10-09 17:09|| 2006-10-09 17:09|| Front Page Top

#10 I don't disagree with your assessment, .com, except for this:

whereas you are certain that is how things will go, I see it as (merely) very very likely.

So in my mind the question is whether we gain anything from the attempt at nationbuilding. And I think we do, to a point. It had to be tried.

Nor was the attempt chosen for its own sake. We have forces at Baghram. We have forces in Anbar province. Specifically, air assets next to axis of evil countries.

That is not by chance. The nationbuilding is more than window dressing, but its value is more for the strategic presence it and might continue to give us IMO.

Posted by lotp 2006-10-09 17:20|| 2006-10-09 17:20|| Front Page Top

#11 It had to be tried.

Absolutely right, IMHO.

its value is more for the strategic presence

And this is prolly why we continue to pour treasure into the effort.

Thx for the feedback, lotp. Good points.

Posted by .com 2006-10-09 17:33|| 2006-10-09 17:33|| Front Page Top

#12 Thinking about this reminded me of an incident from my youth (decades ago).

We lived not too far from a small-mid-sized city with a certain population of welfare recipients living in run down housing projects. My father and some other blue collar guys with construction skills volunteered to teach people in the projects some basic maintenance skills. They even raised money for tools that would be donated.

The effort was a flop, but an instructive one. After most of the initial attendees quit, one young woman explained why: when you don't feel safe living in the projects AND you don't feel as if you have a stake in the buildings, you don't bother fixing things.

So the guys stopped the training effort, donated a couple weekends of fixup work to repair the worst neglect and called it a day. But the word got back to the city leaders and they did start up a community effort to police the area better, which helped turn that area around, slowly.

That story helped me understand something that had puzzled me. We were pretty poor -- Dad worked, when there was work to be had, often 2 jobs at once, day shift and 2nd shift, but money was very tight. Per person, we didn't have much more than some of the people in the projects. Nor did our friends.

And yet ... our houses were kept as neatly as we could and when a few dollars were available they got painted, upgraded, repaired. Friends would help friends when it was more than a 1 or 2 person job. The difference was that we owned the house (if you didn't count the mortgage that kept getting bigger when we fell behind financially), and that most of us hunted and all of us could shoot and our neighborhoods were pretty safe.

Made all the difference in the world.

Posted by lotp 2006-10-09 17:54|| 2006-10-09 17:54|| Front Page Top

#13 The lesson in Iraq is damned clear: nation-building is a loser. Same for Afghanistan. Why? What do they have in common? Islam. Whether the add-on layer is Arrogant Arab or Terminally Tribal, Islam perverts, and eventually trumps, all efforts to bring change, progress.

Excellent post, .com. The era of nation building, at least with respect to Islam, is well and truly over. Maybe, after we decap the Saudis and they all begin to starve, we'll get some progress made, but even then it is still less than likely. We are now in the era of flat-out breaking things. Break them over and over again if we have to, but no more of this pouring treasure down the Islamic toilet.

The controlling nature of Islam depends upon a shithole environment bereft of communication and independent thought. Trying to nurture that in the minds of these backwater thugs is like teaching a pig how to sing. And we all know how that particular song goes.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-10-09 18:19|| 2006-10-09 18:19|| Front Page Top

#14 This attitude about Afghanistan is a rather recent conversion for me. Up until about a year ago, I believed we had a real chance in Afghanistan - winning hearts and minds, etc. I presumed that the lack of Arabs would mean success was possible.

Duh. I ignored the fact that PakiWakiWorld is, well, PakiWakiWorld - and it has no native Arabs. I wuz blinded by my own bias. I wasn't thinking BIG enough. The problem transcends Arabs...

Over the last year I started losing faith - it seemed the whole Afghani thing was just limping along, working only where we were very active - and not very well at that, and devolving wherever we weren't. In sum, just not really going anywhere. Drug shit was the only visible growth industry and success story, in fact.

The recent developments, "resurgent" Talebunnies - with amazingly high and consistent kill rates, Pervy PakiWakiWorld giving its stamp of approval to a home for recruiting, training, arming, etc. without hindrance across some imaginary border, none of the promised controls on the madrassah indoctrination centers, the lack of an ROE that allowed for more than just treating the symptoms -- it became clear that even training up the Afghans to bear the load and killing large numbers would never actually end this shit.

So I thunk about it. Quite a bit, in fact. And came to the same conclusion I have in Iraq... We're from planet Earth and they're from Islam.

Where is there real intransigent implacable grief? Duh. Where there's Islam. As long as Islam is what makes someone tick, despite the ebbs and flows that may make us think there's progress at times, in the end it's futile.

Why has Islam become an issue, after lying dormant for centuries? Why, when their technology was eclipsed and people who wandered the desert with WW-I surplus Enfields (or whatever) could no longer actually threaten anyone from the current century, has it reappeared on the world stage? Why is this ancient pestilence back? Money. Oil money. The funding of Islam is the problem. Cut it off, and they return to historical insignificance - a mere occasional bite form a horsefly. Swat as needed.

So that's where this take comes from. I hope it makes sense. I'm not feeling all that spiffy, today, so I'm not sure I'm hitting on all cylinders and making sense to anyone else.

Posted by .com 2006-10-09 19:18|| 2006-10-09 19:18|| Front Page Top

#15 perhaps the answer is a worldwide biowarfare effort, with a vaccine plentiful,available, and free, but developed by Joooooos?

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-10-09 19:30|| 2006-10-09 19:30|| Front Page Top

#16 Why is this ancient pestilence back? Money. Oil money. The funding of Islam is the problem. Cut it off,

Agree this is really the only solution that has short and long term promise.

Bush has probably done more than any other pres, but we need to get to a point where we don't need Saudi oil ASAP. And if we could put out technology that made oil more expensive than the new alternatives, the war on terror would be over.

Posted by anon 2006-10-09 20:56|| 2006-10-09 20:56|| Front Page Top

#17 No, if we never bought another drop of Saudi Oil other countries would.
The Oil=Money spigot will not be turned off by making America Oil-Independent.

Posted by Redneck Jim 2006-10-09 21:29|| 2006-10-09 21:29|| Front Page Top

#18 So that's where this take comes from. I hope it makes sense. I'm not feeling all that spiffy, today, so I'm not sure I'm hitting on all cylinders and making sense to anyone else.

You're making plenty of sense, .com. Islam is like some sort of congenital cultural retardation that benights all it infects. Your old viral meme characterization springs to mind.

I used to hope for some sort of Islamic reformation. I no longer have any pateince for that. Too many have died in Islam's name already and so little internal effort is being made to rehabilitate this pestiferous perfidious pisshole of a political ideology masquerading as a religion that I'll be just as happy to see it outlawed and dismantled. When we're done, Korans should be curiosities displayed by museums as archaeological artifacts.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-10-09 21:38|| 2006-10-09 21:38|| Front Page Top

#19 Whew! I never know, anymore... and I wish I was more eloquent and squandered less bandwidth. Apologies to all for the Joycian approach. Lots there to cherry-pick if'n anyone wants to bash me, lol. :-/

Posted by .com 2006-10-09 21:46|| 2006-10-09 21:46|| Front Page Top

#20 nah, it's all conjecture and bullshit, yours is no worse/better than mine, but we all bow to zenster by measure of sheer piling-on-without-a-clue. Rockandrollstu - take a chill pill.

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-10-09 21:50|| 2006-10-09 21:50|| Front Page Top

#21 Back at 'cha, Frank.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-10-09 23:55|| 2006-10-09 23:55|| Front Page Top

23:55 Zenster
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22:58 Zenster
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